


everybody got a spot, love

by subwaywalls



Series: east of eden [2]
Category: Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Found Family, Gen, Protective Dadza, seems like you guys enjoy this concept‚ so... have some more? :D?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-10
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:46:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27473728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/subwaywalls/pseuds/subwaywalls
Summary: Tubbo's doing fine without his hive, really. There's a reason he split off from them before they... fell.Tommy insists on helping him out anyway.(Philza is both more and less terrifying than Tubbo expected.)
Relationships: Toby Smith | Tubbo & Phil Watson, Toby Smith | Tubbo & TommyInnit
Series: east of eden [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2006293
Comments: 71
Kudos: 1048





	1. encounter

**Author's Note:**

> oh boy it's a series now 👀

About nine meters out from the front door, Tubbo gets cold feet.

“You’re  _ sure _ this is okay,” he says, and Tommy offers him the most encouraging smile he can scrounge up. 

“Of course! Look, Phil’s super chill—and he’s got, like, this sixth sense for when someone doesn’t want to talk about something, and he’ll respect that.” Tommy tugs their joined hands along, hoping to snap Tubbo out of his hesitation. “He doesn’t know about any of the, you know, so don’t worry about it.”

Tubbo takes a slow breath in. “Okay,” he says, quietly. And then, less to himself and more confidently, “Okay. I’m fine.”

“No hive, no hunters,” Tommy agrees.

“Right,” says Tubbo. “Nobody’s after me.”

“Nope. We took care of them all. You’re good to go wherever.”

That’s enough to loosen Tubbo’s shoulders a little, and he lets himself be led into the house. His glamour flickers a little when he passes over the threshold, probably due to how nervous he is, but it settles quickly enough that the glimpse of iridescent wings and shiny shell could’ve been passed off as a trick of the eye.

Just to check, though, Tommy says, “You good?”

Tubbo manages a laugh, so he’s probably not that badly off. “Yeah, I’m good,” he confirms. “Just felt a weird breeze or something, I don’t know. But it’s gone now.”

“Probably the heating or something,” Tommy says, kicking his shoes off and shutting the door behind them. “Wilbur complains that air flow gets weird when it’s this cold outside and the heater’s on.” 

“Really?”

“Yeah. It’s not  _ that _ bad, if you ask me—he just complains a lot about humidity and stuff. Affects his music or something.” He shrugs, and then raises his voice to shout, “Phil! I brought a friend over!”

“Cool!” Phil shouts down from somewhere upstairs. “Hi Tommy’s friend, make yourself at home! I’ll be down in a bit.”

“Thanks!” Tubbo hollers back, and smiles back when Tommy gives him a thumbs up. 

“Do you want any snacks?” Tommy asks, making his way to the living room. He makes sure to keep his voice down as he continues, “Sorry it’s taking us so long to get you situated, have you been able to get like—food and stuff?”

Tubbo snorts and bumps their shoulders together. “I’m not  _ helpless _ on my own,” he says.

“But it’s new for you, isn’t it?”

“If I was completely alone, yeah. But I’ve got you and Wilbur and Techno now, don’t I?”

Something warm melts a little in Tommy’s chest. “Yeah,” he says, refusing to get choked up over some dumb sentiment that definitely doesn’t make him emotional right now, nope, not at all, “you do.”

Tubbo shoots him a smug look, like he planned to make Tommy teary-eyed on purpose, so Tommy pokes him with just enough static charge to make him jump a little.

“Anyway,” Tommy says, ignoring the invisible limb that forcefully pokes him back, “I can show you the draft that Wilbur’s working on right now, but he won’t be back till later. Techno’s in the garden with his potatoes, but we should leave him be unless we really need help. He gets super into his potatoes—did you know you can make batteries out of them? He showed us, it was really cool.”

“I think I saw a presentation or something about that once. But let’s start with that draft,” Tubbo says. And then pauses. “Wait, isn’t Wilbur’s voice still all sorts of fucked?”

“Yeah. It’s better, but not good enough to do anything with. Tea and honey only does so much when he wrecked it that bad.”

“He still hasn’t told me what he was screaming about,” Phil’s voice says, and Tommy glances over to see him walking into the room with a friendly wave. “It wasn’t because you were egging him on, was it?”

“I wasn’t  _ egging him on _ ,” Tommy protests. He’s about to add that it wasn’t because of him at all, only to remember that oh yeah, it is kind of because of him. Because of the electrical fire in the bug nest. Oops.

Philza raises a brow at him, but nonetheless turns his attention to Tubbo, who looks a little startled. “Hi, I’m Phil,” he says.

“This is Tubbo,” Tommy says, when Tubbo doesn’t immediately respond. 

Thankfully, Tubbo snaps out of his brief reverie. He says, “H-hi. It’s nice to meet you, Phil.”

“Same to you. You two can keep yourselves entertained, I assume,” Phil says, and Tommy nods. “Alright then, have fun. Holler if you need me.”

“We will,” Tommy says cheerfully, and starts pulling a vaguely shell-shocked Tubbo upstairs. He figures Tubbo isn’t really comfortable with unfamiliar adults yet. 

“Don’t go rooting around in your brothers’ rooms!” Phil adds. “Stop pissing them off, Techno’s going to brain you with a kitchen knife someday!”

“He wouldn’t even be able to reach me!” Tommy boasts.

“He would easily be able to reach you,” says Tubbo, who probably remembers the time Techno had just picked him up and held him up for nearly a full hour, looking completely unbothered by the electricity snapping at his skin and arcing through the air. Stupid blood knight and his stupidly high pain tolerance.

“He would not,” says Tommy anyway. “Have a little—have some  _ faith _ , Tubbo.”

“I have faith,” Tubbo says. “Faith that Techno has kicked your butt so many times in sparring sessions that there’s no way he wouldn’t do it again.”

“Wow,” says Tommy, with mock betrayal. “I hate you.”

“You don’t.”

“I absolutely do. Now c’mon, help me raid Wilbur’s room, it’s such a mess.” Tommy pushes open the cracked-open door to reveal the relative chaos of Wilbur’s living space. He ignores the scattered clothes and instruments, instead making a beeline for the wooden desk. The workspace itself is actually fairly neat, with a computer sitting alongside a few stray sheets of paper and thin books and a water bottle.

Tommy paws through it all, taking a tiny bit of glee from moving everything out of their original spots, until he finds the slightly worn piece of loose-leaf paper with their planned song on it. 

“Here we go,” he says, turning to Tubbo and flapping the paper at him. 

Tubbo looks up from investigating the music stand a little closer to the door. “You got it?”

“Yeah. Let’s move over to my room before Wilbur stomps in yelling at us to get out,” Tommy says. And then, on second thought, “Actually, let’s just stay here. It’ll be funny.”

“Your dad—Phil—he said not to aggravate your brothers,” Tubbo says, nearly scolding. 

Tommy blows a raspberry. “That’s just a recommendation. But you gotta live life on the edge sometimes, you know?” And for all that Wilbur ends up super loud and dramatic, he’s a safe edge to play on. More fun than anything else, without real risk at all.

“By the way,” Tubbo says. He sounds more serious than before, but otherwise unreadable. It does look like something’s bothering him, though. “About your dad. You said he doesn’t know anything about the weird stuff you guys go through, right?”

“Yeah,” says Tommy. “We’re keeping it a secret. But he’s still pretty cool, isn’t he?”

“Pretty cool,” Tubbo echoes, and then gives himself a shake. “Why, though?”

Tommy blinks. “Why what?”

“Why keep it a secret? Are you…” Tubbo pauses, chewing over his words for a bit, and eventually says, “Are you scared of him?”

Tommy tries to imagine being scared of Philza—Philza, who just rolls his eyes and smiles at shenanigans that have gotten them kicked out of homes before, who helps them up and doesn’t ask why they fell if they don’t want to talk about it, who lets them come to him for anything from anxiety to sibling disputes to random requests. “No way,” he says, easy as breathing. “Phil loves us.”

“Then why?”

That’s a good question, and not one that Tommy knows the answer to. He hadn’t been lying; it’s not  _ fear _ of Philza that holds him and his brothers back, really. It’s just—why take that risk? No matter how little the chances, the fact that their entire little home is on the line makes it unreasonable. 

Eventually, Tommy just shrugs.

“I dunno. It’s easier, I guess,” he says. “Easier on him, too. Some of the shit we do is really dangerous, and we don’t really want to worry him too much.”

At this, Tubbo tilts his head to the side. It occurs to Tommy that keeping a secret as large as this (though harmless, he likes to think) must be a novel concept for Tubbo, having grown up with every voice in the colony rebounding through his mind without filter. Everyone’s thoughts being a given to each other makes things clearer, in a way. They don’t have to wonder at how someone else might act or say.

It also made them very fast to abandon Tubbo when he started standing his ground and asking questions, though, so Tommy doesn’t really envy him.

“Okay,” Tubbo says, at length. He looks like he wants to say something else, or at least think a little longer, but in the end all he says is, “Right. Uh, show me that song? I’ll check it over and see if there’s any mistakes or, I don’t know, room for error or anything.”

“Well, Wilbur wrote it,” Tommy says, “so there’s probably not much to worry about for that. But this is your life here, and it’s gotta work out the way you’re happiest with, so let’s make sure we get all the details right.”

* * *

After an afternoon of music and planning, Tommy and his brothers eventually decide that it’s as good as it’s going to get—for today, at least. 

Quickly—not quickly enough to be impolite, but quick enough to avoid a dinner invitation or something—Tubbo makes an excuse to leave. 

It’s not that he doesn’t like them. The brothers are nice enough and all, and the house has a pleasant air to it that feels homey and safe in a way no other place has. He does feel a little guilty ditching without telling them the real reason why, but…

Tubbo makes it two steps from the front door when Phil says from the threshold, “Tubbo, could I talk with you for a moment?”

Uh oh. 

He stops, because— _ a crimson sun and endless wings _ —he has an inkling that he has a better idea of Philza’s capabilities than his sons do. They say he isn’t involved with any of the paranatural stuff at all, but Tubbo’s certain that he’s stronger than even Techno on a bloodrush. 

Tubbo would prefer not to suffer the other end of that power, so he turns around warily. “Yeah?” he says. 

The man standing in front of him has a cane and no wings, and the door swinging silently shut behind him is normal in every way. But.  _ But _ . 

Hive memories don’t lie. 

(Even if he hadn’t wanted those memories. He’d split off from the colony weeks ago, and at the time he’d been halfway across the town with his hands over his antennae, but the hivemind was desperate and dying. It yanked on every mind even tangentially related to their own, crying out,  _ Danger! Help! That blade sings flame and those wings don’t end and these galaxies devour us, help, help! _

He’d sobbed, curling in on himself and begging them to stop. He didn’t want to hear them, he didn’t want them, he wasn’t one of them anymore,  _ why _ was he still hearing them? They cut him out—he cut them out—

The silence afterward had been both sickening and relieving, all at once.)

So. Imagine his surprise when the same face outlined in wrathful flame and cosmic wings just waltzed into Tommy’s living room without a hair out of normal.

In that moment, Tubbo hadn’t been able to  _ breathe _ past the terror howling through him. He’d thought—he doesn’t know what he’d thought, just a rush of horror and betrayal and absolute panic. 

And Tommy doesn’t even know. None of the brothers do, he’s certain.

… He’s alone in this, if nothing else.

Philza hums, an oddly reverberant note that makes Tubbo’s heart want to jump out of his chest. “You have nothing to fear,” he says.

Tubbo opens his mouth. Then closes it without a word, nervously.

“I mean it,” Philza says. He leans leisurely on his cane, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “I can tell the difference between someone who means harm and someone who doesn’t, Tubbo. And you don’t. So long as that remains true, our doors are always open to you.”

Tubbo glances down, anxious. His glamour is still in place, an illusion so perfect that even he forgets that he’s not what he is, but he supposes he shouldn’t be surprised that the other can see through it. 

_ Every feather an eye, _ he thinks, and doesn’t know where that thought comes from. Another dying memory from the hive, maybe. 

“If I,” Tubbo begins, and falters. Then, girding his courage, he pushes on. “If I told them. About you.”

“I’d prefer you didn’t,” Philza says, quiet and gentle, “but I wouldn’t retaliate or anything. They’re going to have to learn eventually.”

Tubbo bites his lip. The utter normalcy of this scene juxtaposed with his memories of starfire and feathers makes his head hurt a little, honestly. The smile Philza has right now is incredibly different from the one he remembers. It’s smaller, more genuine. It’s not a threat. 

“I’m waiting for them to decide,” Philza continues, idly brushing something off a sleeve. “The way I found out is kind of cheating, and I don’t want to out them before they’re ready.”

“They’re doing some dangerous things,” Tubbo says. He tries not to feel like he’s betraying their trust, but this is something Philza must know already. 

As expected, Philza inclines his head; he does know. 

Some kind of defensiveness curls itself tight in Tubbo’s chest. “Why don’t you help them, then?” he asks, thinking of Techno’s blood and Wilbur’s voice and Tommy with his hands over his heart, saying with a strained laugh,  _ I might not be immune to myself after all, Big T. _

“I can’t,” Philza says, with a slight degree of frustration. Not directed at Tubbo, but—himself, maybe. “I meant to provide kids who might have baggage trailing them in the shadows a shelter, and I do. This home is safe in a way that few others are. You felt that, didn’t you?”

Tubbo is probably the only one who can specifically place that feeling, actually. The security of Philza’s house feels like there are eyes everywhere, but they’re not watching him. They’re watching out  _ for _ him, their gazes turned strictly outside to anyone who might approach.

The hive was a bit like that, with the rotating patrols keeping watch by the entrances and exits. It’s weird to think that Philza alone can replicate that level of relative safety without restricting when his family can come and go.

“If my kids need to run from their shadows, they run here,” Philza says. And then, with a wry turn of his lips, “I didn’t think they’d run  _ at _ them.”

“You didn’t know Tommy and them had powers at first,” Tubbo says, in realization.

“Or that they had the sense of right and wrong to use them.” Philza doesn’t sound like he disapproves of that, though. If anything, he sounds amused. “Imagine my shock when I realized that swearing an oath to protect these grounds actually made me  _ less _ able to protect them, because of their bravery. I’m happy to say they’re a smart and capable bunch, and they know that if they need help, or if they’re in danger, they can just come home.”

Something shifts around them, then, like a heat mirage. Tubbo feels it just barely brush past his arm and jumps, but it feels cool and soft and only slightly bends the air when it passes through. 

“And if it’s still too much for them to escape,” Philza continues, lifting a hand, “I’ll know.” He runs his fingers over what looks like empty space, but something there  _ ripples _ , and Tubbo blinks in an attempt to bring it into focus. It’s a trick of the eye, somehow, like… If everything Tubbo sees is a projection on a screen, then what Philza’s doing is shaking that screen without changing the projection at all. 

Tubbo’s brain kind of hates how it doesn’t make sense, but Tubbo himself is riveted. Focusing on that spacial distortion is hard, and he has to fight to process the few glimpses he gets—the edge of a star, a sighing void, something dark and silken that hums and flutters until—everything snaps back into place, perfectly normal.

The only difference is that Philza is holding a feather.

It’s not a feather, though. It looks like space cut in the shape of a feather. It glows but it doesn’t, it’s burning but it’s not, and Tubbo kind of really wants to know what it feels like. 

Intellectually, he knows that same kind of feather is what pulled his ex-hive to their deaths. Touching it killed them. He probably shouldn’t want to touch it.

Emotionally, he  _ really _ wants to touch it.

“This goes for you too,” Philza says, casually, and puts it in Tubbo’s hands.

He can’t help the short buzz of excitement that flashes through him (a literal buzz, before he pins his wings back down). The feather doesn’t feel real, and it flickers in and out of sight the moment Philza lets go of it, and it makes him feel suddenly very, very small, but it doesn’t hurt him. 

It kind of feels nice.

Tubbo realizes he’s lost track of it almost immediately, like it just melted in his hands while he was watching and didn’t notice, but the nice feeling remains. “What was that?”

“That,” Philza says, “means everything I can do for them, I can do for you, too.”


	2. salvation

“You know what they’re planning, right?”

“Your legal guardians just died in an apartment fire, and I wager Tommy’s still feeling guilty about it. I can make a few guesses. Connect a few dots.”

“And you’re okay with it, just like that.”

“I said I wanted to shelter kids with baggage trailing them in the shadows, didn’t I?”

* * *

Tommy has a mouthful of sandwich in his mouth when the call comes in.

Immediately, he looks over to Wilbur, who also straightens to attention. This is the moment of truth; hours spent poring over lyrics and wording and trying to make it  _ just _ right for Tubbo has led up to this.

Philza picks up the phone and says, “Hello?”

The other end of the call is inaudible. Wilbur grabs Tommy’s attention by clinking his glass of water on the table, and once he looks over, he mouths,  _ act natural. _

In response, Tommy picks a crumb off his plate and flicks it at him, because he’s always acting natural and he definitely doesn’t need the extra instruction, thanks. Wilbur send him an affronted look and brushes himself off.

“I wouldn’t put it that way,” Philza says, somewhat dryly. His gaze flickers back to his boys with clear, if somewhat exasperated fondness before he refocuses, a little of his usual warmth curling into something sharper, more serious. “But yeah, I guess. Why do you ask?”

“I’m getting more water,” Techno says, and Tommy has to quash the urge to hush him when he noisily scoots his chair back.

After a long moment of Tommy and Wilbur making impatient faces at each other as they chew though lunch at a snail’s pace, Philza eventually says, “Huh. That’s interesting. Yeah, I—hm. I can’t make any promises, but we can give it a shot. No, I understand. Don’t worry about it. I’ll call you later to confirm.”

Tommy nearly stuffs the entirety of his sandwich in his mouth by the time Philza puts down the phone and turns to them, a contemplative crease to his brow. 

“Who was that?” Wilbur asks, perfectly casual except for the way he’s kicking Tommy under the table. 

“Oh, an old friend of mine who works for the foster system.” Philza tilts his head to the side a bit, and for a moment Tommy has the paranoid thought that he’s going to say something like,  _ did you have anything to do with this? _

He tells himself that’s impossible. There’s no way he’d know. 

“Is your voice  _ still _ sore?” Philza asks instead, Wilbur groans like he'd forgotten about all about it until then.

“Yeah,” Wilbur says sulkily. “It’s better, I mean—I still have it, I can  _ talk _ —but I don’t think tea and honey’s gonna do anything for it anymore.” He actually recovered remarkably quickly the first time around, after the first couple of days, but straining himself with a second big song the moment his voice returned wiped out most of that progress. 

“Stop using it so much, then,” Philza says, reaching over to pull Wilbur’s beanie down over his eyes. “You’re going to hurt your throat if you keep that up.”

Wilbur huffs, waving Philza’s arm away and nudging his beanie back up. “Consistent practice is how you get better.”

“Not when you’re recovering from overexertion,” Philza says. “Rest first. You can sing later.” A pause, and then, “Where’d Techno go?”

“I think he got distracted by his potatoes,” Tommy suggests, apropos of no obvious evidence. The garden out back is where Techno tends to be when he’s not where they expect him.

“That’s fine, then,” Philza says. “Once he comes back inside, we can discuss the call I just got.”

“I can go get him now,” Tommy says eagerly, at the same time that Wilbur says, “What was the call about?”

“You let him be, and  _ you _ be patient,” Philza says first to Tommy and then to Wilbur. “We’ll get to it in a bit, I just need to check on something first.”

Tommy still goes running for Techno the moment Philza leaves the room, though. Because of course he does. It’s for Tubbo! Why wouldn’t he?

* * *

Since the collapse of above and below, the world has been—odd. Gifts of power sway reality in ways they hadn’t before. 

But some things don’t change at all. Philza’s noticed a trend, when it comes to people like him. He doesn’t remember enough to make out the shape of it for sure, but he remembers more than most, being one of the few who leapt instead of fell. He knows enough to notice the way his own all gravitate towards the same line of work. 

(It’s hard to miss them, when their wings drag limply along in the surrounding planes, every eyed feather clamped shut by mortal ignorance. Philza always furls himself a little smaller when he walks past the physical forms they’re rooted in, unwilling to touch, unwilling to wake a supernova he doesn’t know, unwilling to share the numbness of forgotten glory.)

The need to help is written into their existence. More often than not, they wind up working to protect those too young to protect themselves. Can’t teach an old soul new tricks, or something like that. 

As they are, they’re imperfect. There will always be slippage through the cracks, unfortunately. But Philza still considers them a pretty good start; they’re more common in the more reliable parts of the system. On occasion, he even enjoys their company just for who they are, though some of those with particularly shriveled faith just ruffle him up more than anything else.

He can’t say he knows exactly who becomes who, but he thinks he managed to identify one’s post, at least: the fastest wing in a flock. This is definitely not someone who remembers what he used to know, but has a mind keen enough to wonder about it.

Philza dials a number by memory, wondering if this won’t end up being a waste of time. He already knows his decision, and for this he’d go so far as to assume his sons’ decisions, too. They’re not too subtle about it, honestly. 

The phone picks up. “Hello?”

“Hiya mate, it’s Philza. I wanted to ask you directly about a certain call I got this morning.”

There’s a shuffle of papers on the other end of the line, muffled enough that Philza could pretend they’re feathers if he were feeling particularly nostalgic. “Sure?”

“Do you have the papers for a boy named Tubbo? He was orphaned recently, and apparently flagged as an, uh, ‘interesting case’ the same way my sons were.”

He hears a burst of static, like a laugh tied in with a sigh. “The name doesn’t ring a bell, but I’ll look.”

No memory shifts, then. Philza cocks his head to the side, distantly registering the sound of feet pounding around the yard as he waits. Seems like impatience got the best of either Tommy or Wilbur (probably Tommy, judging from the distant yelling and the situation at hand). He doesn’t bother focusing on the feathers at their heels.

They should know better than to pester Techno in his garden by now. If they’re getting chased with a spade, that’s on them. 

“Phil?” the caseworker says, bringing his attention back to the call. “Uh, mind telling me why I have signed documents cataloging and placing a kid I don’t remember meeting? These date to the apartment fire weeks ago—I was meeting up with Scar that day, I couldn’t have filed this.”

Not a perfect example of event manipulation, then. Philza doesn’t know if it’s an oversight or an overreach of Wilbur’s powers or even a purposeful leak, for whatever reason. “Don’t worry about it, Grian,” Philza says. 

“Phil—”

“He’s probably going to end up with me. My youngest’s taken a shine to him, and he’s hauled his brothers on board.”

“That doesn’t really explain where he came from.” Grian sounds more entertained than stressed, at least. “We’ll still need to… wait. Where is he living now?”

Philza doesn’t actually know, but if he had to guess where the papers put him, he’d assume it’s with him. “Me?”

“That’s what it says, but—how is everything in place, paperwork-wise, without me knowing how it got there?”

“Maybe it just slipped your mind,” Philza says, amused.

“Phil. Philza. What do you know that I don’t?”

Not much, Philza thinks. Not the names they used to bare or the duties they used to shoulder, no purpose that’s not of their own making. “All I know is that my boys like Tubbo a lot, and I don’t think I have any reason to say no against that,” he says.

Grian says, with dawning comprehension, “Did they have something to do with this?”

“Thanks for your help,” Philza says lightly. “I’m sure we’ll talk more in a bit.”

There’s a bit of good-natured grumbling, and then, “As long as you’ve got it covered. I’m still going to send someone to check up on the kid, just to make sure.”

“Of course.”

“I think I know what they’ll find, though. Congrats on your eventual fourth son.”

“Don’t tell them yet,” Philza says, laughing. “I want to see how much they think they need to convince me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me? making references to the hermits being like our resident guardian? it's more likely than you think
> 
> anyway this chapter is shorter sorry but it's just to wrap up some loose ends before the. ah. next thing starts.


End file.
